Local labor board officials filed a complaint against Amazon Monday alleging the company illegally discouraged organizing efforts at four suburban warehouses last year.
At the four facilities, located in Joliet, Monee, Channahon and Romeoville, employees organized by collecting signatures for petitions for higher pay last August and September, according to the complaint, filed by Angie Cowan Hamada, the National Labor Relation Board’s regional director in Chicago. The company allegedly told workers they could not participate in protected activity outside the facilities in violation of the National Labor Relations Act.
Amazon allegedly called the police on workers who were collecting signatures in Joliet and Romeoville, and in Joliet told the police to remove workers from the property.
The company is also accused of conducting illegal surveillance of workers in Joliet, Monee and Romeoville, as well as illegally interrogating workers in Romeoville.
A hearing in the case is scheduled for early October at the labor board’s regional offices in Chicago.
“These complaints are without merit and we look forward to showing that through the legal process,” Amazon said in a statement Wednesday.
The complaint also alleges Amazon violated the law by “selectively and disparately” applying certain company policies “only against employees who engaged in union activity and/or other protected concerted activity.”
Local labor board officials made similar complaints against the company this week in Alabama, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Wisconsin, according to the NLRB.
One of the policies in question is the company’s “off-duty access” policy, which, according to the complaint, prohibits workers from being inside or in “working areas” outside Amazon warehouses when they’re off duty.
The complaint calls for Amazon to issue a three-year repeal of the policy at all facilities where it is in effect.
In the Chicago complaint, labor board officials also called for a repeal of the company’s solicitation policy, which prohibits solicitation and distribution of literature at work and which officials allege was also selectively enforced against workers who engaged in union or other protected activity.
Workers at the company’s Staten Island JFK8 warehouse are unionized with the Amazon Labor Union. Two other attempts at unionization in New York have failed; a union election for workers in Bessemer, Alabama, remains contested.
No workers at Illinois warehouses have filed for union elections, although warehouse staff at some facilities have engaged in other forms of organizing in recent years.
In October, workers at the Joliet facility named in Monday’s labor board complaint protested outside the facility during the first day of the company’s fall Prime sale, calling for a base pay rate of $25 an hour.
More than 40 workers at the same Joliet facility have filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging a racist workplace environment; employees had previously alleged racist death threats had been scrawled on a bathroom wall at the warehouse. Amazon said at the time that it “works hard to protect our employees from any form of discrimination and to provide an environment where employees feel safe.”
